Lake Wobegon

By Nancy K. Barry, an assistant professor of rhetoric and English at the University of Iowa | June 13, 1987

The first time Garrison Keillor and "A Prairie Home Companion" took the stage, there were 12 people in the audience. The show was entirely a local enterprise: Keillor had been hosting a morning program for Minnesota Public Radio, and he decided to expand the venue to try out a variety show, with musicians, comic sketches, commercials for the imaginary merchants of Lake Wobegon and, of course, the weekly "news." For those of us brought up in the television era, the idea of a weekly radio-variety...

Given that each broadcast of Garrison Keillor's long-running radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion," is itself a kind of anthology - a grab-bag of music, comedy skits and a centerpiece monologue, "The News From Lake Wobegon" - it seems appropriate, if not inevitable, that there would one day be "The Keillor Reader. " The book is a compendium of the Minnesota humorist's Lake Wobegon tales, short stories, essays and excerpts from his novels, most in the wry, wistful, nostalgic voice that...

There is only one Lake Wobegon, and it's going to stay in Minnesota. There had been speculation that the make-believe community of Lake Wobegon, where you still can buy Powder Milk Biscuits in a big blue box in Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery, might have to move, but that has been put to rest, a newspaper reported Sunday. The homey town in central Minnesota is the setting for the popular Saturday night program "Prairie Home Companion," broadcast weekly by Minnesota Public...

Garrison Keillor spoke from the kitchen of his home in New York - he has another residence in St. Paul, Minn. - and said that he could see from his window the high buildings of the city. But his thoughts, he promised, were back in the middle of America. "I could tell stories from New York, at this point," he said during a recent phone interview. "But I feel others are doing that. " Keillor's stories, the ones that have made him a renowned American humorist, the ones he...

"It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. ..." Since 1974, those words, uttered by Garrison Keillor in his whimsical baritone on "A Prairie Home Companion," have lured listeners to public radio stations nationwide for two of the most unusual hours of radio in America. Through monologues, music, commercial parodies and-above all-stories, Minnesota native Keillor continues to mine his distinctly Midwestern view of the absurdities of modern life while incorporating elements...

Garrison Keillor, author and host of NPR's "A Prairie Home Companion" variety show, continues his storytelling on the live stage. Of course Keillor will relay the latest news from Lake Wobegon. But this evening will also feature tales of Midwestern life in general, and about becoming a father at an older age. And all told with the dry wit from the Radio Hall of Famer that has kept audiences tuned in for more than 30 years. 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Lund Auditorium, Dominican...

Peter Ostroushko no longer lives in Lake Wobegon. The former musical director "A Prairie Home Companion," Ostroushko left the radio program a year before its host, Garrison Keillor, called it quits. "I knew the show was coming to an end," Ostroushko said. "I was really the last of the old-timers and the show had run its course." It was a nine-year course for Ostroushko, who led the band through featured spots and background music for the show's fictional...

"The News From Lake Wobegon" hasn't gotten old even after 36 years. The public radio program "A Prairie Home Companion" with Garrison Keillor's small-town tales and characters — that one might think is only of interest to fuddy-duddies — has found a storytelling niche that attracts an audience of 4 million. When "Prairie Home" leaves its Minnesota base for live broadcasts around the country, a diverse audience comes out to see what's next in the weekly folksy series.

Architecture holds up a mirror to society, warts and all. That may explain why Du Page residents are as uneasy as a bunch of gangly adolescents when they gaze at the county's tallest building and see such a towering symbol of their collective growing pains. Designed by Chicago architect Helmut Jahn, the 31-story Oakbrook Terrace Tower might well be called the "Too Building." Critics say the building is too tall and will create too much traffic. They`ve also spread a rumor that the...

Whodunit? A Minnesota billboard displaying a photo of former President George W. Bush and the question "Miss Me Yet?" apparently is a sign in search of an author. Though at least one Minnesotan is getting near the bottom of the mystery. National Public Radio blog The Two Way reported that Minnesota Public Radio staffers saw the sign along Interstate Highway 35 near Wyoming, Minn., but "there's no readily apparent claim of ownership on the billboard." Minnesota Public...

Memo to Garrison Keillor: In Lake Wobegon, all children may be above average, but in real life some columnists are way below average. If recycling worn-out liberal spin is the best you can do, eject now.

It's been a deceptively quiet few years in Lake Wobegon. Since the 2006 Robert Altman film derived from Garrison Keillor's subtle, transcendent public radio show, Keillor and his "A Prairie Home Companion" company have gone about their anachronistic business, the brush with a hotter publicity flame not seeming to have altered their chemistry in any significant way. Some 33 Saturday evenings per year, a would-be hard-boiled detective struggles...

Thank you for Garrison Keillor's columns. We can never get enough humor in our lives. Keillor's recent columns have been priceless. I am grateful that he has turned his clever eye on the world of politics instead of Lake Wobegon, and grateful that the Tribune has been wise enough to include him on the Commentary page.

"The News From Lake Wobegon" will be broadcast off the shore of Lake Michigan when author-host-newspaper columnist Garrison Keillor broadcasts his Americana variety show, "A Prairie Home Companion," from the Ravinia Festival. There will be storytelling, comedy skits, a blues performance by Elvin Bishop and possibly the chance as an audience member to shout out to your peeps at home listening. You know, the usual from the popular weekend public radio show. 4:45...

"The News From Lake Wobegon" will be broadcast off the shore of Lake Michigan when author-host-newspaper columnist Garrison Keillor broadcasts his Americana variety show, "A Prairie Home Companion," from the Ravinia Festival. There will be storytelling, comedy skits, a blues performance by Elvin Bishop and possibly the chance as an audience member to shout out to your peeps at home listening. You know, the usual from the popular weekend public radio show. 4:45...

Pontoon By Garrison Keillor Viking, 247 pages, $25.95 A literary cartographer would find it necessary to trace, in forceful blue lines, tributary streams running from Mark Twain and Sherwood Anderson to the Wobegonian river of stories and novels that has issued from Garrison Keillor for more than 20 years. Not that Keillor's waters are larger, and Twain's and Anderson's smaller, as would be the case with physical tributaries, but because of similarities in sensibilities and focus.

The days are getting shorter and the nights a little cooler, which means that time's running out to loll about under the stars at Ravinia. With this weekend's lineup, you have little excuse not to pack a picnic basket and spread a blanket on the manicured lawn. The Temptations harmonize tonight with The Spinners; Huey Lewis spreads The News Saturday night; Garrison Keillor brings Lake Wobegon to Highland Park on Sunday; and Monday is a Labor Day Spectacular with Erich Kunzel conducting the Ravinia Festival...

Crushing dreams Whether it is breaking home-run records or riding atop the Alps in the yellow jersey, we project our childhood fantasies onto the athletes we watch as adults. As the organizers of the Tour de France said last week, cheaters crush our childhood dreams. Laurent Pernot, Chicago Eerie visions This is in response to "A worrywart's guide to vacationing" (Commentary, July 25). Columnist Garrison Keillor's recent travelogue tirade on his Norwegian vacation read like a...

Thomas L. Bergstrom, age 72, died Oct. 6, 2000, beloved father of Scott (Maureen, nee Burke), Valerie (Jeremy) Berkely, Karen (Billy) Hermes, Gail (Paul) Ables, Norma (Kevin) Moore, and Joan (David) Gilbert; fond brother of Allan; loving grandfather of Katie, Eli, and Kyle, Molly and Sadie, and Lila; former husband to Rosemarie Bergstrom. Served as sergeant in the U.S.A.F. from 1946 to 1949. Retired from Illinois Bell Telephone Co. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made in his name to STOP Colon Cancer Foundation,...

Hawaii By James A. Michener, read by Philip Bosco Random House Audio By the end of March, most Chicagoans are dizzy with spring fever. Need an escape? Hawaii has long been fodder for springtime fantasies, and this classic book from the king of sweeping sagas is an excellent vehicle to those Polynesian islands. James Michener covers all the bases: geological history, missionary invasion, human sacrifice and -- as any decent spring break book should -- smoldering passion.